Made a believer

When covid-19 reared its foul head nearly a year ago, I was like many Americans who saw the virus more as a severe cold or a case of seasonal flu, rather than a killer.

Also like others, I initially didn’t fully embrace wearing a mask, even at times scoffing that I’d had the flu over my lifetime and recovered just fine after a miserable week.

“What’s the big deal?” I recall telling a friend one afternoon as we zipped around the Harrison Country Club without masks. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the severity of this has been amplified mostly to tighten controls over freedom-loving citizens.”

Others reading today might have felt similarly during those early months. Only the weak feel the need to wear masks, and I’m not weak, nosiree bob, I thought. Back then, some accounts put the fatality rate from this novel coronavirus at close to that of the flu.

Now fast-forward to the end of 2020. Man, was

I ever ignorant.

As of last week here in Harrison, I’ve had a dozen or more friends test positive, and two of them died shortly after being hospitalized. Their days were numbered as soon as they entered the hospital door.

In our neighborhood alone, the neighbor to our right contracted covid while those living on our left side were exposed after two co-workers at her workplace tested positive.

Two corporate leaders I know tested positive, along with a golfing buddy who began coughing uncontrollably less than a week ago. A 73-year-old friend who worked at the Harrison Country Club Pro Shop died within three days of being diagnosed and admitted to the local regional medical center.

Suddenly, valued readers, it seems no one is dismissing this killer as some kind of temporary inconvenience. Masks have become the norm, as has hand-washing and maintaining a sixfoot distance from others. And now, a frightening realization has struck.

The thought barged into my consciousness about 4:30 the other morning as I realized just how precarious our personal situation has become. And I fault myself for not recognizing it much sooner.

At 74, I have type 2 diabetes and A-fib, along with a few extra unwanted pounds, which puts me in the highrisk category for possibly dying from a covid infection. But more concerning to me is that Jeanetta, while appearing much younger than her 71 years, has pre-existing lung ailments that restrict her breathing capacity on good days. She occasionally finds herself taking a deep gasp to fill her lungs. Her four grown children have teased her for years over the high-pitched sound she makes at those times.

Today, this situation is no laughing matter for anyone in the family, especially where I’m concerned.

I now realize all it may take to claim her life in short order is simply contracting the lung-clogging disease and entering the hospital door.

And that becomes a realistic possibility with this scourge swirling ever closer. All it would take is a single unknowing contact and resulting infection to set that possibility into motion.

Our friends who’ve lost loved ones to the virus know this scenario all too well; once you say goodbye at the hospital entrance, there will be no personal visits, only isolation, as our dear friend, Mary Patrick, her husband Ronnie, and daughter Casey discovered after Mary, who’d been coughing and feeling poorly for two days, was loaded into an ambulance at the North Arkansas Regional Medical Center as they stood at considerable distance and watched her loaded and whisked away to Washington Regional in Fayetteville. “I love you. See y’all soon,” Mary shouted to her daughter and husband over the drone of the ambulance engine.

Only weeks earlier, Mary’s favorite brother who lived an hour away had succumbed to covid.

Mary was treated for a few days and actually “appeared” to be stabilizing, even showing improvement (an especially diabolical aspect to this disease) before suddenly spiraling downward until requiring a ventilator where she steadily slid ever further into death.

The Patricks sadly lived the very thing that chilled me when I realized the similar potential situation our household finds itself facing today. Even if I were to contract covid, there’s no place in the house to adequately seclude myself and prevent Jeanetta from becoming exposed. This disease is everywhere today.

I wrote this to make everyone aware as of mid-December how serious and personal this pandemic has become in all our lives, even more so since the holidays have arrived. Just 10 months ago, most of us knew very few who’d contracted covid. That made it easy to dismiss.

How wrong was that when we see what’s happening here at year’s end to those we know and love? For increasing numbers, it’s become a reality and increasingly a matter of life and death.

The last thing we want is being forced to bid final farewell to our loved ones at the hospital door.

Now go out into the world and treat everyone you meet exactly like you want them to treat you.